Colchester Cycle Challenge 2017
We move swiftly from walking in May to cycling in June where our Colchester Cycle Challenge launches on the first day of National Bike Week.
Five miles is recommended as a reasonable distance for people to cycle and recent research shows that regular cycling can halve the risk of heart disease and cancer. Cycling doesn’t only benefit your health, if you use it as a means of transport you also get reliable journey times, often a choice of routes not open to car drivers, and the opportunity to introduce activity into your daily routine without the cost and time needed to go to a gym!
Most of urban Colchester is covered within five miles, so the Colchester Cycle Challenge is a good opportunity to promote cycling and its benefits within your workplace.
The Challenge!
Open to all Colchester businesses and organisations, the Colchester Cycle Challenge runs from the 10th – 25th June.
The challenge can be used to encourage and support people new to cycling to either get on a bike or cycle more, as well as to challenge the regular and experienced cyclists to push themselves to cycle further/more regularly.
Can your organisation top the cycling leaderboard? Can you pit one department against another to see who is the cycling champion?
As our overall aim is to encourage more people into the joys of cycling, we are offering everyone the chance to be rewarded for their efforts. Prizes will be awarded in the following categories:
Movers – Beginners
Shakers – Regular cyclists
Groundbreakers – The competitive hard core!
Active Travellers – Cycle to work/to a meeting at least twice during the challenge.
Plus a BIG SHOUT OUT for the organisation that gets the most colleagues cycling and collectively cycles the furthest!
Help, Encouragement and Motivation.
Sometimes people are a bit nervous about cycling and just need a little nudge of encouragement.
To help colleagues new to cycling to get started, share the Cyle Colchester website with them where they can find information about how to get help to fix their bike, route planning and Bikeability confidence training. www.cyclecolchester.org.uk
To encourage colleagues to take part, could you organise a lunch time bike ride to a nearby café? Could you offer staff a free bike check at work? A free bike breakfast as a thank you for cycling always goes down well? Or how about some sort of prize draw or random selection of a daily cyclist for a prize? Could you offer to buddy new cyclists and help identify and then try out their route to work? Contact us if you are interested in offering Bikeability confidence training sessions at your workplace.
Get creative and invite your regular cyclists to contribute ideas on how others who don’t currently cycle could be encouraged to.
Contact us if you want hard copies of the Colchester Cycle Map or Get On Your Bike leaflet, both can be found electronically as well (via the links)
It may be worth sharing the link to the Essex Cake Escape – a fun way to combine cycling to cycle friendly cafes with free cake! There are cafes locally in urban Colchester suitable for family rides with children, plus cafes across Essex for longer distance cyclists.
Then for additional family cycling fun at the weekend there is the Cycling Centurion Treasure Trail in High Woods Country Park.
Taking Part
We are using the Active Essex Workplace Challenge platform for this challenge and all cycle journeys can be logged either directly on the website or via the Active Essex app. Both Leisure and Active Travel cycling can be logged.
To join the challenge simply …
1) LOG IN (if you already have an account) or SIGN UP at Active Essex Workplace Challenge
2) Once you are signed in go to LEADERBOARDS
3) Click on COLCHESTER CYCLE CHALLENGE
4) Click on JOIN CHALLENGE Log your rides either online or download the Active Essex app.